Findings from the fourth annual MetLife American Dream study show that nearly half (47 percent) of Americans say they have credit card debt, with one-quarter of them saying concerns over how to pay it down keep them up at night.
Thirty percent say it will take them more than two years to pay off their credit cards, and 19 percent expect to never be out of debt.
Louisiana State University’s
Joseph Mason is slated to appear before the Senate Small Business Committee on
Tuesday to discuss how the deepwater drilling moratorium will affect businesses
along the Gulf.
Business icon Steve Forbes on
Sunday called President Obama anti-business, just days after he signed an
extensive financial reform measure into law.
The president and CEO of
Forbes Inc. said that Obama has wrongfully categorized the business community
under the umbrella of excess.
“Well, the president clearly
is [anti-business],” Forbes told Candy Crowley on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“I mean you can take excesses
and tar the whole business community, which is like taking election fraud and
saying that’s why we shouldn’t have free elections.”
Forbes also said that recent
negative reaction to the White House by the business community was completely
warranted and that Obama wasn’t taking their concerns seriously. Forbes pushed
to delay altering tax codes until at least two years had passed and the economy
had a chance to bounce back on its own.
“They just think they’re a
bunch of greedy crybabies, and the business community is reacting to that,” he
said.
“If they took that healthcare bill, financial reform bill,
suspended it for three years, left the tax code alone for two years, three
years, you’d see this economy roar up and you’d see the stock market
immediately go up 20 percent.”
Democrats launched an offensive Friday to play up voters' concerns about a Republican return to power this fall by releasing a new Web video.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) released a new Web video seizing on remarks by top Republicans criticizing Wall Street reform legislation that President Obama signed into law this week.
The video features remarks by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) criticizing Wall Street reform as an overreaction, as well as National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) Chairman Pete Sessions's (Texas) comment last weekend that GOP rule would return Congress to the "exact same agenda" Republicans had sought when they were last in charge.
"Given Republicans’ knee-jerk partisanship and obstruction, it’s not surprising that they would label legislation that takes bold steps to reform our financial system and puts consumers back in control of their finances an ‘overreaction,’" said DNC spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine. "I’m sure it’s a shock to their systems."
The video more or less amounts to a victory lap for Democrats on the new financial industry regulations after they shepherded the legislation through the House and Senate over the past few months. It also reflects a sense among Democrats that the legislation will be a political boon going into the fall's midterm elections.
"Only those longing for the fat-cat days of the Bush administration that allowed the super-wealthy to get wealthier at the expense of the middle class would call Wall Street reform an ‘overreaction,'" said Hoffine.
Unless Democratic leaders allow more for more amendments on the small business jobs bill, Sen. George LeMieux (R-Fla.) could withhold his support for cloture on the legislation even though he plans to support an amendment creating a $30 billion lending pool and final passage of the bill.
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine)
on Thursday signaled that she will not support the small-business jobs bill
that she originally championed because Democratic leaders will not allow
Republicans to offer amendments to the bill.
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